Never Let Me Go
by if i knew numbers
Summary: It was all so funny. Funny because she wanted this almost as badly as he did - maybe even more. She needed this, needed him to be an anchor in this hallowed existence. Her anchor. A Steve/Natasha drabble.


_Just a pointless drabble I could not quite get out of my head. Hope you enjoy. _

* * *

It was all so normal.

So damn domestic and _foreign _(to her anyway).

It started out fast than somehow progressed slowly. It was a tango they managed to fuck up and dance backwards (she blamed his dancing capabilities).

_"Are we..?" He takes a breath, brain ticking a mile a minute, searching for a strategy, as if this were a battlefield. _

_"I don't know, Steve." She answers because yes would have been a lie and she's not even sure what the question is. _

_She distracts them both from this game of twenty questions by pulling him in close and crushing her lips to his. _

She should have seen it coming though because this was what she was trained for - seeing, expecting before things happened. It was how she managed to survive all these years. But she's human (as much as she pretends she isn't), and mistakes were bound to happen.

She just never thought it'd be like this - a collection of habits, a tooth brush left behind, then a change of clothes. Suddenly, a plea for 'stay, just for tonight' had long ago lost its _just for _and inched its way to permanency.

_"Where are you going?" She asks as she feels the mattress shift and she suddenly feels cold. _

_"I thought-"_

_"Come back to bed." _

_He just smiles - that reassuring smile of his that makes her stomach lurch and proceeds to jump back in, tucking the blankets over their heads. _

Yet it wasn't the normalcy of it that caused her to feel so unsettled (normal had never been desirable to her). It was the fact that this was all so damn easy (she simply scoffed at that notion).

After all, it was no secret that Natasha Romanov's life had, thus far, been anything but easy.

Russian, spy, assassin, _Avenger_. The hard knock life came with the territory.

But she'd long ago given up feigning any sort of a normal life. Because a normal life fostered habits and relationships and a sense of existence. A normal life meant getting caught, meant_ living _and patterns. In essence, a spy was none of those things. A spy was a ghost. Only a shadow of the moniker that'd been bestowed upon her.

Natalia Alianovna Romanova had died long ago, and in the wake of her death, Natasha - the Black Widow, rose from those ashes, destined to live in the shadows.

She had lived in the shadows for as long as she could remember - a hallowed existence pieced together with falsehoods and fragments of truth. Different lives and choices that were a culmination of who she was, who she is, who she will be.

_"What's your real name?"_

_"Which one?" _

She was Taisia Kuznetsov, Clara Bernard, Alyssa James, and whatever other persona her handler's conjured up.

The more she was them, the easier it was to forget - forget Natasha Romanov.

But then there were anchors. Those rare few who'd managed to somehow anchor her into existence like roots desperately seeking refuge in the earth's soil.

They all came and went like seasons - all melting from one to the next. Sometimes they linger, sometimes she can't let them go. Others that's all she wants - to let go.

Much like the fragments in her memory, they are all moments. Moments that made her feel alive. Made her _real and tangible. _Not just skin and bones and a body. They made her feel. Some coerced, some organically.

They'd all tried to keep her grounded into this reality.

_Tried. _

There was something in the sentiment of it all.

_"Stop doing this. Revenge will get you nothing." She couldn't stomach him when he was being so self-righteous. At least that's the lie she told herself. Truth: he was right. _

_"This isn't the field, Captain. Don't give me orders." She's stoic. Eyes cold, hidden. Her facade. _

_"I'm not. I'm begging you." _

She figures that's what she likes most. How he tries. How normal he is with her when everything else is anything but normal.

There's that word again - normal. It lingers hazily in her mind like a mirage. She can see it, make out its shape, its form, its existence, but she can't touch it. It is a comfort she has always been denied.

He knew she was an assassin - she never turned that side of herself off (didn't think she could). Just as she knew who he was. Captain America. The super soldier with a heart of gold, willing to sacrifice his mind, his body, his everything for the sake of all mankind. She didn't think she could ever do that. Her choice to make such monumental sacrifices had been stripped from her at an early age (_"For Mother Russia, Natalia"). _She had been _the_ sacrifice - mind, body, and soul.

She likes that about him though. That he doesn't pretend, that he doesn't flinch at the bruises that taint her skin long after missions have come and gone. His fingers linger sometimes, and his eyes (he's always been such an open book) swim with worry, but he doesn't fret over her like a Mother Hen. He knows she's been at this a very long time - been alone for most of it. He accepts her, and that basic sentimentality, was enough for her.

That and she finds solace in the fact that she did not have to pretend. That she could just be. Especially those moments, when he presses calloused fingers softly against her skin and traces his lips hesitantly over every inch of her. Exploring, cataloguing, memorizing every freckle, every blemish, every scar that calls her skin home, that reminds her that this was real. That she is here.

It was all so funny. Funny because she wanted this almost as badly as he did - maybe even more. She needed this. Needed him as anchor. Even ghosts grew tired of their existential existence.

_"I…Please." The words feel heavy in her mouth. _

_"I know," he says, and tucks a fiery lock behind her ear before placing a chaste kissing on the delicate skin of her collarbone. _

_It burns her; anchors her. _

See, the thing about being unmade, about being broken, was that each shattered fragment, each piece that lingered so delicately in the balance of the stars was treasured. Handled so lovingly with care - each shard weighed more than when it had been whole. Because these pieces, these delicate pieces of herself were all she had left. All that was left of a girl, born in a country of turmoil and hope and poverty.

So many assumed. Assumed that she was afraid of sentiment and intimacy. The Black Widow was heartless. But it wasn't that. Not quite. She was just cautious. Much more cautious than afraid.

Yet, here she was, contradicting herself once again. She reasoned that it wasn't a contradiction at all. She was just playing by her rules of unpredictability, about avoiding routines and normalcy.

This though, this was a routine she wouldn't mind even if it wasn't going to last (she knew it wouldn't). Because for as long as she could remember, Natasha could never quite hold the concept of home in her head.

But that was Steve. Home.


End file.
